


Protect You, Protect Me

by megan_el



Series: Trope Bingo 2020 [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Immortal Husbands, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:49:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megan_el/pseuds/megan_el
Summary: “Nico, I’m fine,” Joe is saying, reaching out to him, but Nico takes a step back, vision still clouded by all the blood.“They gutted you like a fucking fish!” he shouts and presses a fist into his stomach, as if he could stop the pain that has nothing to do with physical injury—not his, at least. “You were supposed to stay back and let us handle this!”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Trope Bingo 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873486
Comments: 10
Kudos: 198
Collections: Just Write! Trope Bingo





	Protect You, Protect Me

“Nico, I’m fine,” Joe is saying, reaching out to him, but Nico takes a step back, vision still clouded by all the blood.

“They gutted you like a fucking fish!” he shouts and presses a fist into his stomach, as if he could stop the pain that has nothing to do with physical injury—not his, at least. “You were supposed to stay back and let us handle this!”

Joe shakes his head. His shirt used to be green, but now it’s brown, the shreds of it only partially covering his chest and stomach. Healed, but still bloody.

Nico looks away and swallows hard. He breathes through his nose, but it’s even worse, because the smell makes him want to kill somebody.

“I have to go.” The words spill out, unplanned, but as he says them, the resolve hardens inside of him. He can’t stay here. He can’t do this song and dance again, not now.

“No, you can’t—” Joe stops himself, but not fast enough, and Nico turns to him, sharp— _everything’s sharp and everything hurts_ —and doesn’t care for the grimace on Joe’s face.

“You are _not_ the boss of me.”

And he’s angry, _fuck_ , he’s livid, but he’s also tired, because they’ve been here before, again and again. And yet nothing changes, in the end.

“I know that!” Joe gets loud now, too, and indignant, which is rich, considering everything.

“Don’t tell me what to do, then.” Nico turns to the door, because he has to get out. He has to. He can’t breathe. He can’t think.

“Nicolo, please.”

His knees almost buckle at that voice, the plea in it shredding through him as if he was being dragged over broken glass.

His eyes are wet now and there is a shuddering breath making its way out of him, and he’s going to give in again, give up again, he’s not—

“If you want some space, I’ll go,” Joe says next and, _fuck_ , he just doesn’t get it, he never gets it.

The anger fills Nico’s throat, threatening to choke him, but he pushes it down. He’s not going to start yelling again. He won’t.

“No,” he says without turning around once he’s certain his voice will hold, and then he’s out of the room in two seconds.

Not fast enough to miss the wounded sound behind him right before the door closes.

He throws up in the alley right outside the building, the stench of garbage and piss almost enough to drown out the smell of all the blood.

Almost.

*

_The Protector_ , the villagers call Yusuf after the two of them manage to kill the band of French soldiers who thought a little village in the middle of nowhere was the perfect hunting grounds for food, and drink, and violence they’re so hungry for, these days.

Nicolo has fought, too, but he gets nods and whispers of him being _The Scholar_ after they see him with a book. Yusuf gets grateful looks—and lingering ones, too, Nicolo notices, because he knows those—and the best piece of meat at the inn.

Yusuf smiles at everyone and wants to split his share with him, and Nicolo is hungry, he is, but he shakes his head, squinting as his potatoes and not meeting anyone’s gaze.

They were supposed to spend the winter here, but a week later, they leave the village behind and Nicolo doesn’t breathe easy until he inhales the scent of the sea, the taste of salt heavy on his tongue but light on his heart.

*

He dies twice when they’re on the separate ships towards Genua, yet he does not share that story when the group reunites at the port. They all swore they stopped counting their deaths, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Yusuf remembered every one of Nicolo’s.

Still, as they later lie tangled together in the night, as always, Yusuf’s arms tighten around him even in his sleep.

Nicolo closes his eyes and relaxes. He loves this man with his whole soul, but he loves him with his body, too, like this.

*

This time, even Andy gets angry.

“What was that?” She rounds on Yusuf as soon as the doors are closed and the curtains drawn. “I had a clear shot. We could’ve ended it in less than a minute.”

_A minute and only one body_ , she doesn’t say. She probably doesn’t care all that much. Nico cares less and less, these days, and he’s so much younger.

“He was about to take Nico out, he made him somehow,” Yusuf says in a gruff tone and doesn’t look at them as he starts to unload his weapons.

“Again, I had a clear shot,” Andy says at the same time as Nico grits out that he was fine and able to take care of the guy, if needed.

Yusuf lowers himself onto a sofa with a grunt he’s trying to hide and something in Nico aches, because he never gets angry enough that Yusuf’s pain doesn’t matter.

It always matters. That’s the point. That’s why he’s angry, and tired, and wishing he could wash Yusuf and himself clean before curling up in bed again, safe again. Alive, still.

Andy leaves, at some point. Nico meets Yusuf’s gaze, and when his love reaches out, he goes to him.

He goes.

*

Grenada will forever be the place they avoid. Four weeks of hearing your lover scream in the cell next to you does that to a person.

As they watch the monastery burn from the safe distance, Nico loses the last threads that connected him to the idea of God and it may be the only thing that doesn’t hurt just then.

Yusuf takes his hands in his and Nico squeezes them. When they look at each other, flames are merely a small reflection, a trick of light. Insignificant.

Nico has belonged to Yusuf for much longer than he’d ever belonged to God, after all.

*

Joe rarely gets angry at him, but when he does, the windows tremble—and so does Nico’s foolish heart.

Not this time, though. This time, they’re both angry, and if a window breaks, so be it. Nico would gladly break something now, himself.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” Joe tells him, the fucking hypocrite that he is.

Nico snorts as he narrows his eyes. “Oh, really? I shouldn’t protect you?”

“You could’ve waited for Andy—”

“No, I couldn’t!”

“The plan was—”

Nico’s arms start to tremble. It’s adrenaline, he knows, but he hates it all the same, because it always happens. Joe grits his teeth and goes quiet, and Nico shouts and trembles until he tires himself out.

“Don’t you dare throw _the plan_ in my face,” he snarls, “when you had done worse many times in the past to protect me!”

“And you hated it every time!”

“Well, then you know how it feels, now!”

Joe riles back. “So that’s what it was? A lesson?”

“What? No!”

As if Nico could think straight when Joe was in danger. As if he could be cold, and calculating, and vicious like that to the love of his fucking life.

“Who do you take me for?” he asks, quietly now, all the anger draining out of him in a blink of an eye.

Joe deflates, as if the fight abandoned him, too.

“The light of my existence,” he says, in that broken, honest voice of his. “My reason for living.”

It’s hard to say who moves first, but in the next second, they’re clinging to each other hard enough to leave bruises.

“You’re my reason, too,” Nico whispers into Joe’s neck, tasting dirt, and sweat, and blood. “Why don’t you get that?”

Joe pulls him impossibly closer. “I do,” he promises softly. “I do.”

*

Nico spends several hours wandering the city, and then another half an hour staring up at the dim light in the windows of their apartment.

He wants to see Joe. The ache of it, the worry that has been eating at him from the moment he stepped out—no, earlier, from the moment he saw Joe being dragged into their cell this morning—almost impossible to ignore now.

But he also doesn’t want to go up. Doesn’t want another round of the same fight. He’s not as livid as before, but he is angry, still.

Then there’s a shadow in one of the windows, unmistakable even like this, and Nico moves before he makes a conscious decision.

After all, instincts have never failed him when it comes to Joe.

He barely gets to their floor when the door opens and there he is. Infuriating and alive, impossible but safe, beautiful and…his.

They bump their foreheads against each other’s, gently. _I’m here. I’m here_.

They’re safe now.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Trope Bingo challenge run on the Just Write server on Discord. Trope: Unexpected/Oblivious BAMF


End file.
